Introduction
When
looking for a large TV, the usual suspects that are on the top of most
people’s wish lists are plasmas, rear-projection DLPs, rear-projection
LCDs and the ever-growing but still very expensive large direct view
LCD displays. One technology that is sometimes overlooked is LCOS,
which stands for Liquid Crystal On Silicon. Essentially a hybrid of LCD
and DLP, LCOS uses liquid crystals that are applied to a reflective
mirror; the light is modulated by the liquid crystals as it passes
through them. DLP, on the other hand, uses a reflective technology that
bounces the light either towards or away from the light by tilting the
mirrors. JVC uses a type of LCOS called D-ILA, which stands for
Direct-Drive Image Light Amplifier, in their rear projection TVs and
stand-alone projectors. D-ILA uses three chips, one for red, one for
green and one for blue, unlike DLP’s spinning color wheel.

The HD61Z575 is the largest TV in the current JVC lineup of HD-ILA TVs.
It features three-chip D-ILA technology and has a seemingly endless
list of features, including four-point color management, dynamic gamma
correction circuitry, an HDMI/HDCP digital input, dual auto-sensing
component-video inputs and JVC's D.I.S.T 720p (Digital Image Scaling
Technology) and 75 MHz Digital Super Detail (DSD) Circuitry. The set
features four sets of analog inputs, along with an HDMI-compatible
input with HDCP (High Definition Content Protection) that offers an
uncompressed digital connection for the transmission and display of
high-definition audio/video signals. An NTSC tuner offers split-screen
and multi-screen PIP viewing. The native resolution of the TV is
1280x720 for true HD resolution and the available aspect modes include
16:9, panorama, full-screen and cinema zoom.

Despite being a 61-inch set, the HD61Z575 will fit into more living
rooms and media centers than you might guess. Many wives or girlfriends
may cringe when the delivery truck arrives with a TV this large inside
it, but sports nuts and movie junkies will begin salivating. If you
haven’t kept up on what has been happening in rear projection TVs, you
will be hard-pressed to believe that the delivery man was actually able
to pick up the TV box and drag it into my home all by himself. I had to
take the hinges off my door for him to get it inside, but weighing in
at less than 100 pounds, the days of needing to bribe a small army of
friends or neighbors to help you move the TV if an S Video cable falls
out of the back are over. Picking up this TV is a simple job for even
two moderately strong people. The exact dimensions of the set are
41.125 inches tall, 57.375 inches wide and 18.625 inches deep, with a
total weight of 98 pounds.

Performance was important to me when purchasing a new TV. However, in
the real world, other factors sometimes end up weighing more heavily
than how good the TV looks. In my case, I had a predetermined space
that I needed to fit a TV into and I wanted to find one that was a
perfect fit, so that I could maximize the media niche in my home yet
still allow room for air to pass by on the sides and allow myself to
get my fingers along the sides just enough to grab the TV should it
need to be moved. Using my trusty tape measure at a handful of
audio/video retailers around Southern California, I found the best
combination of perceived picture quality and a TV that was a perfect
fit for my theater in the JVC HD61Z575.

Initial ReactionsWith
the TV set up and ready with the from-the-factory settings, I began to
plug various sources into the TV with mixed results. I have heard
stories about people being incredibly disappointed with their huge
rear-projection TVs. This is most likely because these types of TVs are
very much source-dependent. Analog cable or a poor over-the-air
standard definition TV signal can look awful. Have any old VCR tapes
that you want to watch? Sure, they will play, but every piece of video
noise and grain in the tape is going to get magnified and will stick
out like a sore thumb on a such a fantastically resolute new TV set.
Remember those little flickers at the bottom of the screen when the
tracking is bad? Imagine those at twice or three times the size.

I got my satellite dish hooked up to the TV and was not blown away at
first glance. First off, there is a difference to watching any direct
view picture that requires a period of adjustment. During my first few
weeks of owning the TV, I spent many hours trying to figure out if the
standard def picture could be improved upon. Because my house has a
central hub for all of the Internet and satellite connections, and a
series of satellite switches, I changed out coax cables and connectors
that were included with my basic satellite installation. This improved
the picture incrementally, but what I finally came to learn was that
when I want to get the optimum picture out of a standard def program
from my Dish Network satellite service, I have to go into the set-up
menus of my Dish Network HD receiver and tell it to specifically output
480p, then watch the TV on an S-Video input. This takes some extra
time, so when I’m just channel surfing and flipping between SD and HD
broadcasts, I keep the receiver in 1080i mode, which the TV
down-converts to 720p through the HDMI digital input. The standard def
picture suffers and looks a little blurred, but the HD looks amazing in
most cases.

What this experience made me realize is why I visit so many homes that
have HDTVs that look absolutely horrible. Combine the complexity of
getting the correct output signal from the receiver to the TV with the
fact that most people want to “fill up” their 16:9 aspect ratio TVs
with 4:3 programming in stretch mode, and you quickly learn that there
are many ways to make an HD set look pretty lame. The trick is to learn
how to get the optimum setting and aspect ratio on the screen for each
source.

Professional CalibrationOut
of the box after finding the optimum setting for watching SD and HD
programming, the set looked pretty good, and I lived with my own
settings for a while. However, the next level of performance was
achieved when ISF certified calibrator David Abrams came in to
calibrate the set. He found the colors to be amazingly accurate
straight out of the box and, after fine-tuning this, he next went to
work improving the grayscale and black levels. One of LCOS’s weaknesses
is its lower black levels and, despite being calibrated, there are
simply some limitations to this technology and this, combined with a
slightly weak video processor, causes moments in very dark scenes where
the TV stumbles. On standard definition signals, when an image has a
gradient that moves from dark to light, often you will see steps rather
than a completely smooth transition from dark to light. This can also
happen occasionally on HD broadcasts, typically in scenes with darker
backgrounds, but it is rare.

Abrams also found that while
my new TV comes equipped with technologies like Dynamic Gamma
Correction and Digital Noise Clear Circuitry, the set performed better
with these setting simply turned to “off.” Video technologies like
these certainly make for an interesting demo at the store and make the
picture look different when you select them, but that does not mean
that they make the picture look better.

Doing my own research, looking at hundreds of sets in various locations
around the Los Angeles area, I found time and time again that no matter
how the TVs were set up, any time I ran across the JVC HD61Z575, the
colors seemed to be more natural that those of the other sets around
it. When the calibration was being performed, it turns out that the
factory settings for color were almost spot-on to ISF specifications.
This is not to say that all of these TVs will come this way, but this
was definitely a factor as to why I found this TV to have the most
realistic colors, compared to the DLP and LCD rear-projection sets I
looked at in stores.

Another thing I learned during the calibration process was the obscene
amount of light output this TV was able to achieve. This makes TVs like
this stand out in the showroom vs. others, but ultimately too much
light causes fine details to get washed out. Without touching a thing,
the TV was outputting an average of somewhere in the neighborhood of
150 foot lamberts, which is a measurement of light output for a
display. The ISF standard is 30, so out of the box the HD61Z575 was
about five times too bright. Many people feel that ISF calibrated
displays tend to be on the dark side and they adjust for only optimum
room settings. My room gets a lot of ambient light during the day and I
typically don’t like to watch at night in the dark, so Abrams adjusted
the TV to average 50 foot lamberts. The brightness at the edges of the
screen rolls off just slightly, as do most rear-projection units, but
the amount is hardly noticeably to the untrained eye. The viewing angle
is much wider than any rear-projection set that I have seen before, so
much that I can sit at my kitchen table that is almost at a 90-degree
angle to the TV and still see what is on the screen.

Each of the five video inputs has their own settings for picture and
sound. After tweaking some internal settings in the service menu that
affect the TV across the board, Abrams then went into each of the input
menus and optimized the picture settings for each input. JVC has four
picture options for each input, including “standard,” “dynamic,”
“movie” and “game.” The “Movie “and “Game” settings were left as is and
Abrams made the “standard” setting optimized for dark room viewing. I
then took his settings and lightened them up a touch on the “dynamic”
setting for watching during the daytime or when the room’s lights are
on.